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Friday, 8 February 2013

Thou Shalt Not Ride Sunwise Around Tara!

So - in this second post about the mysterious and powerful Irish injunctions called geasa
- what on earth were they all about?There’s a note by PW Joyce at
the back of his translation of 'Old Celtic Romances’ in which he comments,

Geasa means solemn vows,
conjurations, injunctions, prohibitions.It would appear that individuals were often under geasa or solemn vows
to observe, or to refrain from, certain lines of conduct – the vows being
either taken on themselves voluntarily, or imposed on them, with their consent,
by others.It would appear, also, that
if one person went through the form of putting another under geasa to grant any
reasonable request, the abjured person could not refuse without loss of honour
and reputation.

Interesting as these comments are, they don’t seem quite to
cover the range and quality of all geasa.Was the geas
Gráinne laid upon Diarmuid a ‘reasonable request’ when she asked him, one
of Finn’s faithful warriors, to marry her under Finn’s nose at a wedding feast
that had been arranged partly to settle an old enmity between Finn and her
father?It’s true that Diarmuid doesn’t have to agree – he asks several of his
friends what he should do – but the unanimous decision of all is that though
Diarmuid can decline Gráinne’s geasa, he will lose all honour if he
does.

Thus there seem to me to be different kinds of geasa.Gráinne’s geas on Diarmuid is
an almost insuperable injunction on him to do something he would never
otherwise have dreamed of doing, and it involves him in loss of honour no matter what action he takes. The fact
that he chooses to obey the geasa
rather than keep faith with his lord shows how incredibly powerful the
injunction was considered to be.(So: not at all something you’d use to get the children to tidy up their rooms! Not
something you’d use lightly!)Gráinne had given her father her consent to be Finn’s bride, but casually,
‘without giving much thought to the matter’:

“I know not whether he is worthy
to be thy son-in-law; but if he be, why should he not be a fitting husband for
me?”

When she sees Finn, however, she changes her mind.Desperate not to be married to this man older than her father, her eye falls upon handsome young
Diarmuid. She uses the power of the geas
as an extreme, last-minute measure: her only chance of escape.

Other geasa,
however, are more in the style of prophetic warnings or tabus, like the
many geasa laid upon King
Conaire in 'The Destruction of Da Derga's Hostel'.He is not to shoot birds, for
example, because his father was a bird-man, the male equivalent of the
swan-maidens of many folktales, who can cast off their feathery skins and
appear in human form.This is a
straightforward tabu: you don’t kill the animal which is your totem, to which
you are ‘related’ by spiritual bonds and by blood.

But the complicated geasa
about not going righthanded (sunwise) about Tara or lefthanded (widdershins)
about Bregia, or following three Reds to the House of Red, or sleeping in a
house from which firelight can be seen at night, these are prophetic
warnings.They are not, perhaps, quite
as inescapable as the prophecies of Greek myths.When the oracle at Delphi
tells Oedipus he will slay his father and marry his mother, you know it’s a
done deal. No matter what Oedipus does, no matter how hard he tries, this is what will happen.The event is foretold.In the case of the Irish King Conaire,
however, the geasa merely indicate unlucky actions which ought to be avoided;
and although the assumption is that some
kind of bad luck will follow, they don’t spell out exactly what the consequences will
be.Also, the prohibitions laid down by the geasa seem arbitrary: they are in themselves innocuous
actions.We would all want
to avoid killing our fathers and marrying our mothers.But most of us could ride clockwise around Tara, or sleep in a house with firelit windows, without
coming to harm.

The geasa
piled upon Conaire spell out a sequence of actions and omens which will lead to
his death; but he cannot know this in advance. For the reader, or for the
audience hearing Conaire’s tale told or sung aloud, the geasa are a highly effective literary, poetic
device for building up tension and the sense of approaching doom.And in the same way, the two geasa laid upon Cú Chulain – not to eat
the flesh of a dog, and never to refuse an offer of food from a woman – having
lain dormant for much of the tale, snap together like the jaws of a trap as
the old hags call him to turn aside from his journey towards the army of Maeve
to taste the meat of the hound they are cooking. It’s a signal
that the end is coming, a sign of doom.And Cú Chulain
cannot escape it, although the tale makes it clear that he has the opportunity
– he may refuse, but not without
dishonour, not without falling short of his own greatness. “A great name
outlasts life,” he says – like Achilles.

Cú Chulain has already seen the Washer at the Ford:

A young girl, thin and
white-skinned and having yellow hair, washing and ever washing, and wringing
out clothing that was all stained crimson red, and she crying and keening all
the time.

“Little Hound,” said Cathbad, “do
you see what it is that young girl is washing?It is your red clothes she is washing, and crying as she washes, because
she knows you are going to your death against Maeve’s great army.And take the warning now, and turn back
again.”

“I will not turn back” [says Cú
Chulain] …”And what is it to me, the woman of the Sidhe to be washing red
clothing for me? It is not long till there will be clothing enough, and armour
and arms, lying soaked in pools of blood, by my own sword and spear.And if you are sorry and loth to let me go
into the fight, I am glad and ready enough myself to go into it, though I know
as well as you yourself I must fall in it.Do not be hindering me any more then,” he said, “for, if I stay or if I
go, death will meet me all the same.”

(Translation by Lady Gregory)

As Jane Yolen poignantly said in her comment to last week's post, "We are all under a geasa--of life, of death. And trying to make sense of
when it will be our time, we put the knowledge into story of battling
what we know is inevitable."

I can’t confidently answer the question of whether geasa were ever truly used in real life, outside the tales and the
epics, but I would hazard a guess that they were, just as we know that the oracles were
regularly consulted in ancient Greece and in Rome. I’m willing to bet that there were geasa - prohibitions, tabus - against
the killing or eating of various animals associated with ancestry and with
luck, like Conaire’s bird/spirit father, and Cú Chulain’s iconic struggle with
the hound which gave him his name.Once
Cú Chulain had – effectively – become a
hound, as he did when he offered himself to Chulain the smith in exchange for
the dog he had killed, then in a sense all dogs became his kin.Of course he could not eat them.

I’m willing also to believe there were geasa or prohibitions concerning all kinds of other omens and lucky
or unlucky actions or directions, because after all they still exist
today:feng shui, not walking under ladders, not having thirteen at a
dinner table.

But the geas that one person
could lay upon another, to compel them to do something even against their will
and their honour – that’s something else again, and as far as I know doesn’t
seem to appear in other mythologies.Did
it ever exist?Was it a metaphor
for what we now call emotional blackmail?Or was it something more fearsome and holy, reserved perhaps for special
occasions, for religio-political purposes? Was it a remnant of Druidical power?

7 comments:

Hi, Katherine!It was very interesting to read about Geasa. I found a resemblance of this with in Russian folklore tradition, especially in fairy tales, when the main hero must or must not do certain things as to assure his/her success.Thanks for giving a valuable insight into Celtic culture!Anna

Thank you Katherine, for your insightful, and timely examination of the geasa. I been reflecting on them this last week, thinking about honor, integrity, and the power of belief. I've also thought about self-imposed geasa and how it can bend minds and journeys to the right, and to the left. Thanks for giving me more food for thought.

Loved this post. I have occasionally imposed a gease on people who had annoyed me - 'I lay this gease on you, that you will ever and again remember this hour, and cringe at what you have done this day.' My theory is that, rather as when you tell someone not to think of a pink rhino, they will be compelled to follow your instructions. I haven't had much feedback, so can't tell you if it works.

Thanks, Sue - why on earth didn't I think of asking you? And by the way, everyone else, you MUST read Susan Price's Ghost World series: starting with 'The Ghost Drum' which won the Carnegie Medal in 1987: it's wonderful, it's one of those books I just wish I could have written... and it uses Russian folk tales.

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